


Disheveled - Turkey Day

by cutsycat



Series: Dictionary.Com Word of the Day Drabbles [1531]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:44:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22311178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cutsycat/pseuds/cutsycat
Summary: A lieutenant is shot on accident during Thanksgiving, but it's supposedly an accident. Was it? How will this affect the team's Thanksgiving?
Series: Dictionary.Com Word of the Day Drabbles [1531]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/444514
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16
Collections: 2020 Twelve Days of Christmas, The Writer's Guild Community





	Disheveled - Turkey Day

**Author's Note:**

> Another dictionary.com word of the day drabble. This time from 07/10/2003 for the word [disheveled](http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2003/07/10/disheveled).
> 
> disheveled[ dih-shev-uhld ]  
> adjective  
> hanging loosely or in disorder; unkempt:  
> disheveled hair.  
> untidy; disarranged:  
> a disheveled appearance.
> 
> This is for Day 6 of the Twelve Days of Christmas challenge. Today's prompt is Thanksgiving.

“Wait, what? She shot the turkey?” Tony asked in surprise as he looked at the witness in surprise.

“Yeah. None of us could believe it,” the perky cute blond agreed.

“And how does this relate to Lieutenant Valentine ending up dead?”

“It was an accident. She totally didn’t mean to.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

“So after she shot the turkey, she had this surprised expression on her face and looked at the gun.”

Tony nodded, jotting down his notes though they were also recording it to make sure they got everything. 

“‘I didn’t think it was actually loaded. I better check to see if there are more,’ she said and then she pulled the trigger again. Only this time it missed the turkey, because she wasn’t aiming, and hit Lieutenant Valentine instead.”

Tony was finding it really hard to believe this story. It was sounding more and more like a fictional novel than something that actually happened in everyday life. “Did she get a lucky shot?”

“Oh no, she totally fired the gun five more times.”

“And all five of the bullets ended up in Lieutenant Valentine?”

“Well not exactly,” the witness twiddled her thumbs nervously.

“So what happened?”

“Well as I said the first of the six bullets lodged itself in the turkey. I’m afraid no one was willing to eat the turkey after that. Such a waste of a lovely bird.”

Tony wanted to sigh, but he refrained. It would put the witness on the defensive and they’d lose out on important details, but she was definitely the rambling sort that you just couldn’t speed up and had to let her just get it out, her way.

The blonde shook her head. “The second one hit Josh, or Lieutenant Valentine as you call him, in the arm. By that point in time pretty much the entire room had abandoned the table and sought hiding spots. Some had simply slid underneath the table and their chairs while others had taken off running to get out of the room entirely.”

“What about Josh? What did he do?” Tony prodded.

“Well he tried to stop her, of course, but Aunt Jenny never listened to anyone when she got something in her mind. So he moved around the table to take the gun from her. While he was at the opposite end of the table, she pulled the trigger again and she must have hit one of the light bulbs because the light on the ceiling exploded.”

“That one,” Tony asked pointing to the shattered remains of a pendant light.

“Yeah.”

Tony nodded and gestured for her to continue.

“Anyway, Josh finally made it to Aunt Jenny and he tried to get the gun from her, but she refused to give it up and pulled the trigger three more times in rapid succession. The first shot went wide, but the other two hit Josh directly in the chest area.”

“That was when you called 911?”

“No. One of the runners called 911. I’m not sure when. I hadn’t even thought about calling the cops until Josh went down. He was clearly in pain, but he didn’t look like he was bleeding too much. I think the bullets had been stemming the flow a bit, but he was still losing blood. Before I could even pull my cell phone out the cops showed up. Instead of helping calm everything down, however, they just added to the chaos. Can you believe they tried to arrest Aunt Jenny?”

“Well she was holding the murder weapon and even you admit that she shot Josh.” Tony pointed out gently.

“She did nothing wrong!” Mary, the blond, protested.

“Be that as it may that’s something the investigation will determine. Certainly, your cousin is dead because of her.”

Mary bounced in frustration. She looked like she wanted to say something more, but so far nothing had come out.

It actually reminded Tony a bit of Abby when she was overly excited. “Is there anything else that should be noted in your statement?”

“Just that my aunt totally didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Ok, Mary, thanks. We’ll take it from here. Can you send in your brother?”

“Sure.”

Tony shook his head this was definitely a Thanksgiving for the record books, if even half of what she said was true. He’d never heard of anything like this happening when he was a cop and he did that for six years before joining NCIS. 

Tony wondered if the others were all getting similar fanciful stories. Everyone had to pitch in to interview witnesses for this one since there were so many family members present for the start of this. The total count was somewhere between thirty and forty, Tony thought. 

As he took the disheveled brother’s statement, he couldn’t help thinking about how the sister thought her aunt was innocent and shouldn’t pay for killing their cousin. The brother, Ralph, seemed to have a quite different opinion. He insisted that Aunt Jenny was crazy and needed to be locked up in a mental hospital.

This was going to be one of those cases where the lawyer would probably plead temporary insanity or something like that and he’d probably get it too. Truthfully, Tony wondered if the entire family was insane. It sounded like something like this happening was not uncommon for them.

After multiple hours of statement gathering, they were able to take the evidence and return back to headquarters. For now, Aunt Jenny was still in police custody. They would eventually need her statement as well, but first Gibbs wanted to get a recap and investigate more if needed.

“After this case, I don’t think I’ll ever look at Thanksgiving the same way,” Tony muttered as he threw his backpack under his desk and settled heavily into his chair. “Do you think Abs would mind if I bowed out from our team Thanksgiving get together?”

McGee chuckled, “I’m pretty sure Abs would skin you alive if you even tried.”

Tony cringed. “That’s what I thought, but really I don’t think I could even think of eating Turkey or anything else that is now checked into evidence.”

“Don’t worry, I heard she was planning some crazy vegetarian feast thing.”

“What?!” Gibbs snarled.

“Eh heh heh.” Tim scratched the back of his head. “Sorry.”

“Are you saying that there will be no meat? What about the steaks?” Gibbs protested.

“You’d have to talk to Abs about that one, boss. I only know that she has a book of vegetarian recipes that she’s decided to try out on all of us.”

“Since when did she go vegetarian?”

“Uh, she’s been that way for a while. At least a couple of years. Before Kate died for sure,” Tony offered.

“Yeah, just she hasn’t usually hosted and thus only brought a dish or two to make sure that she had something to eat,” McGee agreed.

“Well then I’m bringing steak to her Thanksgiving,” Gibbs grumbled.

“I’m sure Abby will understand.” Tony shrugged.

“She better,” Gibbs grumped. “Now enough lollygagging. Sit-rep.”

McGee stood up and gave a run down of the evidence that they’d sent to Abby for processing. He also went over the witness statements he’d taken. There seemed to be a general consensus that Aunt Jenny was the one who shot the Lieutenant, so it looked like this would be an open and shut case. 

Ziva and Tony shared their witness statements as well. All of them staring at the picture of Aunt Jenny on the big screen. She really didn’t look like a cold blooded killer.

Gibbs nodded decisively, “Remember trust, but verify. Let’s find out what really happened.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything.”

“I’ll take the financials,” McGee announced. 

“Running background,” Tony called out.

“And I’ll call up their friends and character witnesses and see if I can get more information. This still seems too fanciful to be true.”

Gibbs nodded. “Going for coffee.”

“So is Abs really going to expect us to be excited about her Thanksgiving celebration after all of this?” Tony whispered.

McGee sighed, “Yeah. She was really excited about everyone trying out her new dishes. At least, they’re guaranteed to be weird dishes and not the normal Thanksgiving fare so hopefully there won’t be too many reminders.”

“Yeah.”

“What is this Thanksgiving tradition about anyway?”

“Well the short version is you focus on being thankful and family and friends.”

“And the long version?”

“Well have you heard of Lord Gobble?” McGee asked.

“No. Who is he?”

Tony chuckled and let McGee spin the tale for Ziva. It was a good meme that he referred to. They bantered back and forth throughout the story of Lord Gobble, the 50 foot tall turkey sasquatch hybrid.

It made the day pass quicker and their mood improved after the craziness that was their case. When Gibbs returned they had the proof that it truly wasn’t premeditated. The only saving grace about this whole case was that they didn’t have to notify any relatives of his death. They’d pretty much all witnessed it.

Tony was glad that it wasn’t up to them to prove whether Aunt Jenny was crazy or sane. They ordered the psych tests as the lawyers would want them, but then they washed their hands of it. Let the lawyers fight it out. It was obvious she killed him and whether she should go to jail or not was a matter for the courts. 

Even though a Lieutenant suffered because of her, this was one case where even Gibbs was willing to let the justice system take control. Honestly, Tony couldn’t help wondering if the crazy antics of his family were what had driven Lieutenant Valentine to join the Navy. Tony wouldn’t blame him if they were. 

The guy’s record had been pretty impressive, so it was clear that he’d liked the Navy. Too bad he’d spent Thanksgiving with his family. He might be alive if he hadn’t.

Tony shook his head to free it of the cobwebs created by the case. It was about time to head over to Abby’s. He wondered how Gibbs’ rebellion regarding the steaks was going to go down with her. 

Tony just hoped that Gibbs brought enough steak for him too. He wasn’t looking forward to a vegetarian meal. Vegetables were ok, but they were nothing on a good juicy piece of steak and Gibbs definitely knew how to cook them well.

“Wait. We have assigned seats?” Tony protested.

Abby nodded. “I didn’t want any fighting breaking out and spoiling our Thanksgiving.”

“Uh, Abs. We’re a team. I’m pretty sure we can get along for one meal.”

“Well I didn’t want to chance it,” she retorted pertly.

Tony couldn’t help noticing that she’d placed the people who generally ate meat farther away from her. Ducky was sitting right next to her as was McGee. Tony knew that McGee loved his meat, but Abby had some power over him that made him more willing to be a victim. Tony had never quite understood it, but it was also why McGee’s backbone wasn’t as strong as his he supposed.

Everyone took their seats while Abby brought the dishes out to the table. The first one was at least identifiable in that it was obviously some sort of mashed potatoes, but it looked green.

“Does this have spinach in it, Abs?” Tony couldn’t help staring at the potatoes and wondering if he should run for the hills.

“Yep. Makes it healthier and it’s totally not noticeable in the taste.”

“That’s what you think,” Gibbs muttered under his breath. 

The next dish appeared to be a sweet stuffing of some sort. Or at least that’s what Tony assumed it was. He’d never seen anything with bread cubes and cranberries before. She also brought out a full on To-furkey and some sort of herbed carrot dish.

Tony had no intention of trying that stuffing and wondered why she hadn’t gone more traditional with the stuffing. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to try any of it, but he put on his game face and took a bite of the spinach mashed potatoes and the herbed carrot dish. He didn’t immediately spit them out, so that was something, but it wasn’t something he would be trying again.

He turned to Gibbs and whispered, “Did you bring the steak?”

Gibbs nodded. “Abs wouldn’t let me bring it inside though. You want to come over to my place for steaks after this?”

“God, yes.”

They shared a small smile. Both of them looked forward to eating real food, but for now they were content to enjoy the time with their unusual family and friends and be grateful that no one here thought shooting the turkey was a great idea even though the To-furkey totally deserved it.

**Author's Note:**

> The dictionary.com series has no stories already written for it after this one, so I will be posting at least no more stories before I stop posting again. I'm hoping to get more stories written before then, so that I don't stop posting for a while. Wish me luck! 
> 
> The 2020 Prompts are open now! Go forth and prompt me! [Click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/cutsycat_NCIS_Prompts_2020/profile) to add your prompts to my 2020 Prompt Collection. Just click the sign up link. ;) I'm hoping to complete all the 2020 prompts by the end of 2021. 
> 
> If you are not an ao3 member, you can prompt me [here](http://cutsycat.livejournal.com/50701.html). Please follow the same rules as are listed in the above link. However, because this is a handmade prompt form(that thinks it's a poll), it is considerably more limited than what ao3 provides, so please use the ao3 form if you're an ao3 member. Please note the name option is for a name that I can say this is for so that you know it's for you. Since this is for non ao3 members it won't be true gifts, but you will be mentioned in the notes. Please note if you have already voted in the poll and would like to request more stories you can just add a comment to the poll. Please include the name along with the prompt, so that I can appropriately gift the prompt to you.
> 
> For any authors that want to chat and/or are looking for a place where they can toss plot ideas around and get input from people, you can come join my discord server that is specifically geared towards writing/encouraging people to write and authors. The invite link is [here](https://discord.gg/HFvwpCq). If you're not an author, but want to chat with me about writing/stories or anything else you are welcome to join. I reserve the right to boot you from my server if all you do is pester me about updates, however. *grin* Really anyone who wants to talk about writing and/or plot ideas for various stories is welcome to join. 
> 
> Also, Drakonyashka has translated a couple of my works into Russian. [Tutelage](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12378780) and [Imbue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12378840). Go support them. 


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